There are many ways to study sustainability, but we specialize in landscape sustainability, which focuses on studying and improving the relationships between landscape pattern and human well-being. To understand how we think about sustainability, you need to understand the landscape perspective.
We can demonstrate the landscape perspective by examining a fictional landscape that resembles the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. This landscape is made up of many different features. In the background, you can see hills and mountains. At the foot of the mountains you see desert plants such as shrubs and cactus that serve as habitat for wildlife native to the Sonoran Desert. At the edge of the city, you begin to see elements that were built by humans like roads, houses, and agricultural fields. Moving in towards the center of the city you begin to see larger and taller buildings and more impervious surfaces. Each of these elements are like pieces of a patchwork quilt that individually have different patterns and colors, but together form a complete picture. All elements interact to form what we call a human-environmental system.
The landscape perspective holds that the relative abundance of each landscape element (i.e., the amount of roads/houses/agricultural area/desert within the landscape) affects the sustainability of the region. Also, the spatial pattern of the landscape elements (i.e., their position relative to each other) impacts the sustainability of the region. [Examples?]
In general, the research we do in our lab focuses on understanding and improving the abundance and pattern of landscape elements (like golf courses), with the end goal of making Phoenix a more livable place for ourselves and future generations.